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thus not told that the USAO had entered into a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein until after it was signed,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee. Said Hakes, the former federal prosecutor: “I have never heard of a case where federal prosecutors consult with a defense attorney before they send out standard victim notification letters. To negotiate what the letters would say and whether they would be sent at all suggest that the victims’ rights were violated multiple times.” Starr’s aggressive advocacy for Epstein against allegations of improper sexual behavior was in stark contrast to the path he took investigating then-President Clinton. The Starr Report, the summary of his findings in the Whitewater investigation, which started as a probe of a land deal gone sour and veered into an investigation of sexual misconduct, savaged the president for his involvement with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and was the basis for impeachment. Starr himself would face criticism in 2016 — he stepped down as president of Baylor University amid allegations that he and other university officials mishandled sexual assault allegations brought by female students against members of the school’s football team. The Herald reached out to Starr, through certified letter and through a spokesman for his current law firm, the Lanier Firm, but did not receive a response for this story. Palm Beach police detective Recarey, one of the most highly decorated officers on the Palm Beach Police Department, called the Epstein case the most troubling of his 23-year career. “Some of the victims were — and still are — afraid of Epstein,” he said as part of a series of interviews with the Herald earlier this year. Privately, Reiter and Recarey said, they held onto a hope that Epstein would be brought to trial someday, but they said that that notion had faded. “T always hoped that the plea would be thrown out and that these teenage girls, who were labeled as prostitutes by prosecutors, would get to finally shed that label and see him go to prison where he belongs,”’ Recarey said. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_016456